​A Millennium of Climate Change in Europe: From Medieval Warming to Today's Climate Crisis

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In the 22nd episode of Climate History, co-hosts Emma Moesswilde and Dagomar Degroot interview Christian Pfister, co-author (with Heinz Wanner) of a new book: Climate and Society in Europe: The Last Thousand Years.

Pfister is one of the founders of the related fields of climate history and historical climatology, and he explains how he helped establish these fields. More

The Forgotten History of Cyclone Science: Lessons for the Climate Crisis

In May 2020, Cyclone Amphan battered the east coast of Bangladesh and India, especially Kolkata and the Sundarbans, leaving hundreds of people dead and causing damage of over $13 million USD. This was not the first time such a storm had battered the coast but was only one in the long history of such events. More

E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, Industrial Capitalism, and the Climate Emergency

A few weeks ago Dagomar Degroot provided an overview of the excellent work done by historians of science, historical climatologists and historians of climate and society. More 

Climate Resilience, Past and Present: Rural Communities and Food Systems

This summer, the raspberry crop at Daisy Chain Farm was much smaller than usual. The variable winter weather meant that abnormal freeze-thaw cycles caused the raspberry canes to lose their resistance to cold in periods of thaw, making them more susceptible to damage when the weather turned icy again. More

Climate at the Speed of Weather

They say that climate is what you expect but weather is what you get. Or they used to say that. Now, the climate seems to be changing as quickly and unexpectedly as weather. When New York’s Central Park receives a record 48 millimetres of rain in one hour and then, just ten days later, a different storm system dumps 79 millimetres in one hour, it feels as though more than just weather is at work. ​More

Land Back, Indigenous Futurisms, and the Climate Crisis

​Molly Swain is a Métis woman, or otipêmsiw-iskwêw, from Calgary, Alberta (otôskwanihk), in Treaty 7 territory, Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) Region 3, currently living in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), MNA Region 4, Treaty 6 and Nehiyaw-Pwat (Iron Confederacy) territory. More

Alarming!: The Rhetoric of Warning

The rhetoric of warning, emergency, and alarm is everywhere in climate change coverage. Headlines flag the recent release of the IPCC-1 as our “starkest warning yet,”cities and institutions around the world announce climate emergencies, and academic studies draw on the metaphor of the fire alarm in an effort to convey the urgency of the crisis. As different as each of these registers are, they all invest in the view that warnings are not idle but activating: that they will do something. More

Environmental Racism and the Climate Emergency: An Interview with Ingrid Waldron

Edward Dunsworth: Thank you, Dr. Waldron, for speaking with us today. Your 2018 book, There's Something in The Water, about environmental racism against Black and Indigenous communities in Nova Scotia, has done exceptionally well. More

The Climate Crisis and the Canadian Classroom

We’re in a climate emergency. This isn’t just rhetorical hyperbole, but a statement backed by more than 13,000 scientists. More

Climate History, the History of Science, and the Climate Crisis

Historians have always concerned themselves as much with the present as the past. Some do so explicitly, their work guided by a conscious desire to provide context for a matter of present concern. More

​Historians Confront the Climate Emergency: Introduction

In late June, a “heat dome” stalked the Pacific regions of Canada and the United States, pushing thermometers close to the 50-degree mark and causing the sudden death of 570 people in British Columbia alone. More

What El Niño teaches us about the importance of climate history

When Gilbert Walker codified the Southern Oscillation in the 1920s, he did not define a causal mechanism that could explain weather variability in other parts of the world. More

Climate Histories and Futures in the Indian Ocean World

In the 21st episode of Climate History, co-host Emma Moesswilde interviews Debjani Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor of History at Drexel University. Professor Bhattacharyya is among the most innovative scholars of past climate change, and the histories she uncovers have clear relevance for the future of the Indian Ocean World. More

​The Papers of Thomas Jefferson and the Record of Past Climate Change

In the 20th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Jim McClure, General Editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University.  McClure has spearheaded the creation of a new digital resource: a repository of Jefferson’s abundant observations of the weather and climate of his time. More

Better Understanding the Societal Impacts of Climate Change

In the 19th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde discuss their work on a major article in the journal Nature. More

Little Ice Age Lessons: Towards a New Climate History

Students often ask me: how did climate history – the study of the past impacts of climate change on human affairs – come to be? I usually give the origin story that’s often told in our field. More

Making Climate Policy: What's Working, and Where We Should Go Now

In the 18th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Vicki Arroyo, Executive Director of the Georgetown Climate Center and Professor from Practice at Georgetown Law. More

Six Droughts between 1302 and 1306: A "1300s Event"?

Recently coined the “1310s event," the wet anomaly of the 1310s has attracted a lot of attention from scholars. More

Pandemics, Empires, and the Lessons of History

In the 17th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview PhD candidate Emily Webster of the Department of History at the University of Chicago. Webster's trailblazing scholarship combines environmental history, the history of science, and medical history to transform understandings of disease in the British Empire.​ More

Historical Climate Data Can Improve Our Assessment of Future Climate Risk

Australia is a land characterised by dramatic climate and weather extremes. Currently, our understanding of the nation’s climatic history is mostly confined to official records kept by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that begin in 1900, despite the fact that observations are available from first European settlement of Australia in 1788. More

A Hungry Winter: Colonialism in a Cold Climate

Times of hunger and starvation were part of life for northern Indigenous peoples. Dene, Inuvialuit, and Gwich’in shared lessons about planning to avoid starvation, the need to show proper respect and gratitude for good hunts and successful fishing, and how to eat after a period of hunger. More
Best of the Web

Small Climate Changes Can Have Devastating Local Consequences – It Happened in the Little Ice Age. The Conversation

Poseidon's Wrath Aeon Magazine

Building Just Climate Futures From Our Environmental Past. NiCHE

What the Ottoman Empire Can Teach Us About the Consequences of Climate Change – and How Drought Can Uproot Peoples and Fuel Warfare. Climate History Australia

Climate History Newsletters

Volume 7, Issue 1 (2021):
Resilience to climate change, evidence of past floods, and weather diaries for the public.

Volume 6, Issue 1 (2020):
Pandemics and climate change, evidence for the Little Ice Age, and much more.

Volume 5, Issue 1 (2019):
Weighing nuclear power as a solution to climate change, depopulation and the Little Ice Age.

Volume 4, Issue 3 (2018):
Chinese climate history, whaling and past climate, and a new handbook for university students.

Volume 4, Issue 2 (2018):
A new climate history of Australia, reconstructions of Crimean and Indian climates, and the Tipping Points Project.

Volume 4, Issue 1 (2018):
A new climate history working group, the Sun's impact on climate, and cold golden ages.

Volume 3, Issue 3 (2017):
Famines, volcanoes and ancient violence, and the frigid conquest of North America.

Volume 3, Issue 2 (2017):
Disaster memories, climate and conflict, and controlling nature.

Volume 3, Issue 1 (2017):
Trump's election, medieval climate history, new awards and conferences.

Volume 2, Issue 4 (2016):
PAGES, the IPCC, and Frankenstein's monster.

Volume 2, Issue 3 (2016):
Volcanoes, droughts, and the Maunder Minimum.

Volume 2, Issue 2 (2016):
The Spanish Empire and global cooling, annual meeting at the ASEH conference.

Volume 2, Issue 1 (2016):
New financial support and the Old World Drought Atlas.    

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